It shouldn't harm the tape and should prevent almost all picture breakup due to sticky tape. Obviously you will need to repeat this if the tape gets hot for some reason. This process effectively "takes the fall for you," or gets out all of the tape stickage before you actually record. Simply insert the tape into your VCR and press Fast Forward to quickly move to the end of the tape, then press Rewind when you're there to come back to the beginning (if your VCR doesn't do it for you). Speaking from personal experience, it always seems to ruin the picture in the most critical moments, such as when Ripley first encounters the Alien Queen in Aliens (1986) on my friend's taped-from-TV copy of the movie.ĭon't let a sticky tape ruin your run. That means that if you try to record on the tape for the first time, the tape inside will be randomly catching and snapping off of itself, resulting in a badly distorted picture until the VCR's heads reestablish good positions on the tape. They may have been in the back of an unair-conditioned truck in a hot part of the world, and the tape inside may be more or less stuck to itself. These thinner tapes are virtually standard in Europe, so you are probably out of luck if you live there.Īnd don't even think for a second that the fun stops when you bring your new tapes home. You should also be aware that the longer tapes (longer than the standard T-120 length, which records two hours on SP speed) have thinner tape inside them and are not well suited to recording anything you want other people to watch (such as your Speed Run). Sorry, folks, but please remain calm and don't shoot the messenger.
This also means that usually, the more you pay for your tapes, the better. The existing quality of tapes were relabeled as 'super high definition' or 'super high grade.' These tapes are sometimes hard to find, but in my opinion, the increase in quality you get from these tapes makes them worth their price (usually about three times the price of a low quality 'high grade' tape). That means that the VHS medium has actually gone down in quality since its birth in the late 1970s, especially if you buy the lowest grade tapes (usually labeled 'high grade' to confuse you). Over the years, in order to save money, the tape manufacturers started putting less and less metal into the tapes (the stuff that actually records the video signal on the tape). Unfortunately, people are greedy little piggies, and you now have to choose between crap and crappier crap.
Originally there were no such things as 'high quality' tapes - all VHS tapes were created equal. Once your VCR is trusted and ready to go, it's time to consider your options in buying tapes.
SOMEONE PRESSING REWIND BUTTON FULL
Nothing can stop such buildup (except not using the VCR, obviously), so you should just accept that you will not achieve full quality without coughing up a few bucks to clean the VCR. Old VCRs are usually more dependable than newer ones, but you should still make sure that grime hasn't built up on the VCR's heads over the years. If you already have a trusty old VCR (probably from the early 90s or older) that you know won't let you down, you should go ahead and buy a cleaning tape from your local drug store and use it several times. After that, the cheap VCR will start to degrade, giving you poorer and poorer picture quality, and it may start to eat tapes, etc. You won't need to pay more than $50 in the US at the time of this writing, and you will get a guaranteed standard of quality for the first couple of tapes you record. To start out with, consider buying a new VCR. A DVD recorder presents vastly superior quality. The other option is to record it with a DVD recorder. The most basic way to record a console run is to tape it with a VCR.
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